The New Laws of Digital Technology

07Mar06

ACM Ubiquity has reprinted the 10 Fundamental Rules for the Age of User Experience Technology written by Andreas Pfeiffer of Pfeiffer Consulting. The list emphasizes on the need for companies to shift their focus away from products that are feature-laden which can become confusing and deter adoption. They should instead concentrate on providing rich and rewarding user experience when using their products. Complicated and complex products are returned 50% of the time. I copied the list here and for a short explanation for each rule, you can click on the link I provided above.

10 fundamental rules for the age of user experience technology:1) More features isn’t better, it’s worse.2) You can’t make things easier by adding to them.3) Confusion is the ultimate deal-breaker.4) Style matters5) Only features that provide a good user experience will be used.6) Any feature that requires learning will only be adopted by a small fraction of users.7) Unused features are not only useless, they can slow you down and diminish ease of use.8) Users do not want to think about technology: what really counts is what it does for them.9) Forget about the killer feature. Welcome to the age of the killer user-experience.10) Less is difficult, that’s why less is more.